In The Struggle For Racial Equality, Giant Protests Don't Create Giant Change

While collective action and mass movements are crucial to bringing widespread awareness to the issues, I strongly believe that the needle of social change only moves forward when ordinary citizens do extraordinary things.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

2016-06-01-1464788837-7775835-Dartmout_byRobert_Gill.jpg

This post is by Zac Hardwick and originally appeared on The Well, Jopwell's editorial hub.

Over the past two years, I've been inspired by the activism of my generational peers. Collectively, we've built a movement around the resistance to police brutality, racism, and White supremacy. While these efforts have been encouraging, they have also been distracting -- they blind us from considering our personal roles in resistance. What's missing in the conversation about being Black in America is the everyday role that individuals can play in advancing the struggle.

With the blossoming of the Black Lives Matter movement, a kind of groupthink mentality has permeated our efforts. My generation is energized by the collective consciousness that has developed over the past couple of years, but we have lost sight of the singular role we can play in fighting the malignant racism that has come to define our daily interactions. The implications of this worldview are significant; those who believe racism can only be fought through large protests and demonstrations lose opportunities to advance the movement in our own towns and workplaces. A close look at the life of one of the most influential Black women in history, Rosa Parks, reveals the impact we can have as citizens in a larger struggle of resistance for Black freedom.

Scholars who study social movements acknowledge the many roles people can play in advocating for social change. While some enjoy the platform of picket lines and mass marches, others prefer to work behind the scenes. Rosa Parks is of particular interest because she embodied both approaches -- publicly refusing to sit in the back of the bus, but more frequently pursuing a personal brand of activism that allowed her to fight racism and White supremacy in her daily life. She spent much of her career working for the NAACP in Montgomery, Alabama, where her branch primarily focused on legal cases challenging police brutality and legal lynching in the state. As the mistreatment of African Americans under the law became her focus, Parks devoted her time in Montgomery to seeking justice for the many victims of racially charged violence.

The most interesting aspect of Rosa Parks' activism is that it more often than not centered around the idea of helping individuals. Instead of preaching broad messages of equality and trying to mobilize millions of people, Rosa Parks recognized the impact she could have in her own community by actively resisting government-sanctioned racism in the law. In her NAACP work, she compiled records of dozens of cases of violence against Black men and fought for redress even when she knew all too often that justice would be denied.

I can appreciate Parks' approach to activism because it strays from the typical narrative of the Civil Rights Movement -- that the war against racism is won in million-man marches and freedom rides. A more realistic mantra is that the battles are won on the ground - in the classrooms, courtrooms, and boardrooms - and that change starts with ordinary citizens refusing to accept the status quo of White supremacy.

Parks approached citizenship and freedom in a more practical manner than most civil rights leaders. She believed that communities of color would be much better off with the enactment and enforcement of legislation to provide equal protection under the law. While many civil rights leaders also pursued this worthy goal, Parks was one of the few who actually committed her life and livelihood to carrying out that goal.

My personal destiny is to embrace the legacy of Rosa Parks. After graduating from Dartmouth and working in our nation's capital for a couple years, I will return to law school and spend my career advancing social justice as a civil rights attorney. I will also encourage my friends - who plan to pursue a range of careers more vast than generations before us - to use their talents to advance the many facets of the Black freedom struggle in their own spheres. While collective action and mass movements are crucial to bringing widespread awareness to the issues, I strongly believe that the needle of social change only moves forward when ordinary citizens do extraordinary things.

Image courtesy of Flickr via Robert Gill

Jopwell helps America's leading companies connect with and recruit Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American professionals and students at scale. Sign up to find your dream job.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot